To study whether the distinction between introspective and non-introspective states of mind is an empirical reality or merely a conceptual distinction, we measured event-related potentials elicited in introspective and non-introspective instruction conditions while the observers were trying to detect the presence of a masked stimulus. The ERPs indicated measurable differences related to introspection in both preconscious and conscious processes. Our data support the hypothesis that introspective states empirically differ from non-introspective states.

Même si toute l'expression humaine ne saurait se réduire à l'esthétique littéraire et cinématographique, celle-ci n'en occupe pas moins une place importante dans ce qui révèle le sentiment de l'homme dans son adhésion à l'existence, aussi élaboré soit le cri qu'explicite et déploie cette expression. Liées à des moments de l'histoire, ces formes d'expression les expriment en même temps qu'elles s'en distancient, disant, de façon originale en chaque oeuvre ou en chaque courant, cette résistance de l'humanité à ce qui normalement (...) devrait l'anéantir. De la Shoah aux images de violence dans la cinématographie contemporaine, le témoignage de l'expression et de la résistance interroge le théologien.Even if all expression cannot be reduced to a literary and cinematographic esthetic, the latter does not occupy a place of lesser importance in that which reveals the sentiment of man in his adhesion to existence, however elaborated the cry may be that makes explicit and spreads about this expression. Tied to moments of history, these forms of expression manifest them at the same time that they take a distance from them, depicting,in an original way in each work or in each current, this resistance of humanity to that which normally should destroy it. From the Shoah to the images of violence in contemporaneous film, the witness of the expression and of the resistance questions the theologian. (shrink)